Carrier customization is annoying. Yet the masses who buy direct from the carrier don't seem to care (in the U.S.). They often want the cheapest, preferably free, phone that will be an improvement over what just broke or got destroyed. Nowadays it almost has to have a qwerty keyboard of some kind due to texting volume.

I hide the AT&T icons for Music, Graphics, Tones, Games on the BBs I set up for my users. In the past I tried deleting the service books only to have them return. I did find what I thought was a policy item that would suppress the icons but haven't fully tested the success of this setting. And it is annoying to have my personal cell phone include hardcoded apps/icons I can't even hide, much less remove. A result of my choice though, not buying an unlocked phone I suppose.

I bring this up because I imagine that carriers make money by way of these customizations, often because customers are often blind and don't monitor their cell bill enough. (my users certainly don't, and then they deny making said "purchase" or refuse to pay for it) Everyone thinks "hey, because it's accessible on my phone and I didn't have to give a CC#, it's free". Yet it bills back to their wireless # through the carrier, even if from a 3rd party source. I believe more and more of these offerings now have legal disclaimers to accept, but again, what typical consumer reads them?

So since the N900 won't be offered in customized flavors to carriers, who says the carrier can't provide links to push OTA apps which DO offer these exact same services to N900 buyers? Why not have a web page/site dedicated to augmenting gimmick sales such as wallpapers, ringtones, etc. that is specific to the N900? I guess that's a choice carriers won't likely make, but has it been suggested at all I wonder? Maybe Nokia needs to develop and demo this to them. I mean why can't there be some form of signed installation package for these carrier apps that transmit to an IMEI through OTA and the user clicks once on the N900 to accept it?

Meanwhile the rest of us who grasp file system basics and understand the drag and drop concept can get our tones, wallpapers, etc. for free as we always have.